Food Food Food

[unicornduke]

I'm working on getting some food stuff made ahead and stuff into the freezer. 

I haven't gotten anything into the freezer except ice cream but I can keep trying. 

So last night I made, ice cream base, cheese scones and fettuccine alfredo.

I churned the ice cream today since I worked from home. It was a vanilla base, although I didn't have the vanilla beans. It didn't taste quite so vanilla flavored but I scrape/chopped a whole bar of 72% chocolate into it and it tastes so good. 

Cheese scones, I probably shouldn't have grabbed the one cheese I did because it was a harder cheese and hardened back up. I need to mess with that recipe again. I mostly just chucked it together. 

Then tonight I made brown rice with rice cowpeas with indian spices in the pressure cooker and that'll be dinner tomorrow too. Did I make it too spicy? Yes. So I added some of the corn I had in the freezer and now I can eat it without chugging water. 

I've got Plans for this weekend

1. cornbread  - I need to grind some of the corn I grew for this 
2. more ice cream - I'll buy a quart of cream at the farmers market which makes two batches so ta daaa more ice cream
3. baked stuff - not sure yet but hopefully something I can throw in the freezer - ideas: fig newtons, zucchini muffins, squash pie, hazelnut brownies, lemon polenta cake, mint cookies
4. venison roast - I've got some in the freezer and I want to give it a go. I'll need a side dish to go with it. 

I found a blog about gluten free sourdough starter and bread so one of the things I'm planning to work on over christmas break is that. And getting more deer, but only for grinding. 

Comments

[graydon]

How does gluten-free sourdough work? I thought gluten = bread, more or less; the sponge relies on gluten for structure.

That all sounds really good. Sometimes cheese works better if it stays fully enclosed; I used to make cheese buns with some fairly dry cheese and they'd get steamed during baking and stay softer if the cheese all stayed on the inside of the bun. (which was fairly challenging without resorting to a low cheese/bun ratio.)

[unicornduke]

Gluten free baking relies on a mixture of flours, very rarely is it one type. My now standard mix is a ratio of 6 parts rice flour: 3 parts potato starch: 1 part tapioca starch. So generally the tapioca and potato bind while the rice flour gives structure. Xanthan gum is added as a binding agent as well although I find it optional in some things.

In a wheat dough, the wheat is the binder and structure element and you knead to build it. In a gluten free dough, the starches act as the binder when wet and it's more like a thick thick cake batter. The yeast/starter will still rise it.

Oh yeah, I bet that cheese didn't get fully steamed. The section of the scone it was in, was really thin so it probably just melted and then hardened when cooled. Cheese buns sound amazing.

[graydon]

The cheese buns were pretty good; basic whole wheat bread dough, alas, which doesn't sound applicable in your case (or in mine, now that I know what I can't eat.) Getting the seal to hold took more working the dough than just folding over and figuring out when was enough took quite a lot of practice. (and a lot of scrubbing burnt escape cheese off the baking sheets.)

Thank you for the mix! I might give that a try, I had no idea there was an actual way to get stuff to rise without gluten. (Commercial gluten-free bread has clearly been produced via some unnatural industrial process.)

[unicornduke]

Gluten free baking is a skill all on it's own and honestly, the commercial mixes are good enough if you want to make basic things. I used Bob's Red Mill all purpose for a long long time because it works in almost everything. I only switched away from it because I started making fiddly things like eclairs and it was easier to just bulk buy the flours and mix myself.

Risers like baking powder and soda act exactly the same! It's nice like that. Yeast can be a little tricky though. A number of times, I've gone and squished all the rising out and made the dough odd.

Commercial gluten free bread is very weird and I've stopped eating it for the most part because it just. is Weird. And it doesn't taste very good. Like at first I'll eat it and then after a day or two it is not good.

[graydon]

I never even considered trying because the commercial offering was so strange.

Knowing that the mixes are worth trying for something like biscuits so I have something to put jam on is new knowledge over here, so thank you!

[unicornduke]

GLuten free "wheat" bread is something I still struggle with. I've honestly switched over to primarily eating corn bread and corn based flatbreads because they're easier for me and less disappointing. Plus I'm growing my own corn for grinding. So I'm hoping the sourdough works because it would be nice to have the variety

Yeah, just keep an eye on the ingredients, some have bean flours including Bob's Red Mill AP. Some people can taste the bean flour after baking. I never could so it was just fine for me.

There's enough interest in gluten free baking that there's a number of good mixes out there now! It's pretty great to be honest! I think the most popular are cup4cup, gj jules and bob's red mill. Anything by those companies is good. Bob's red mill also sells things like brownie and cookie mixes so if you've got a certain baking project in mind it might be easier to grab one of those.